[Irl-dean] Some Comments on Accessibility of CHM Format Resources

[Joshue O Connor]

Barry McMullin wrote:

>Hi Folks -
>
>Following some discussion at the Irl-DEAN seminar last week, I
>have now made available a short white paper providing "Some
>Comments on Accessibility of CHM Format Resources".  It is
>available at this URL:
>
>http://eaccess.rince.ie/white-papers/2005/chm-2005/
>
>I would appreciate any reactions, clarifications or
>corrections. Of course, per our discussion, do please feel free
>to refer to, or link to, this white paper if you receive further
>enquiries about this wonderful "new" format.
>
>Best wishes,
>
>- Barry.
>
>_______________________________________________
>Irl-dean mailing list
>Irl-dean at list.eeng.dcu.ie
>http://list.eeng.dcu.ie/mailman/listinfo/irl-dean
>
>
>  
>
Hello All,

Thanks to Barry for the excellent resource on CHM files. It cleared up a 
couple of things about the file format for me and apologies to Gerry - 
as I originally thought that the .chm files were compressed HTML instead 
of compiled help files. 

Firstly - Has anyone done any screen readers/user Agent testing with 
.chm files and if so how accessible is it?

> CHM is a Microsoft proprietary, closed, file format which is typically 
> used to implement "help" for application programmes running on the 
> Microsoft Windows platform.


Is .chm being sold as an accessible standard to rival HTML by third 
party vendors or as a format with accessible features? I get the 
impression its the former. Even seeing the words 
"Microsoft","proprietary" and finally "closed" makes me nervous before I 
hear the first thing about it. 


In my opinion if we start to see a trend for vendors trying to establish 
this as an "alternative or better" standard than HTML/XHTML then it 
should be met head on with the kind of information Barry offered. It is 
counter productive and confusing to people who are non-technical but are 
looking for an accessible solution for their website etc to be getting 
conflicting advice especially from people out for a quick buck.

    *

      The collection of "pages" are aggregated together into a single
      resource or file, which can be conveniently downloaded, emailed,
      backed up etc.

    *

      The CHM format incorporates data compression which means it would
      generally occupy less disk space and/or be faster to download than
      the corresponding collection of separate HTML resources.

Ok so the above could be seem as the "merits" of .chm.

I have a couple of questions:

    * Can .chm files be outputted as HTML with the rich media content
      again  "separated" from the .chm, placed in sub-directories and
      then linked from an outputted HTML file?
    * Are companies being sold the .chm document conversion tools with
      the idea that they can put their "converted" .chm files or
      automatically generated output online, and that it will be accessible?


Answers on a post card please

Joshue O Connor

_Web Accessibility Consultant _
*
**Centre for Inclusive Technology (CFIT)* *
National Council for the Blind of Ireland *

joshue.oconnor at ncbi.ie +353 1 8821915